The present invention relates to improvements in or relating to a method and apparatus for bottling beer.
At first, a beer bottling machine according to the prior art will be described with reference to FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings. In this figure, reference numeral 1 designates an empty bottle to be filled with beer, numeral 2 designates a bottle feed screw, numeral 3 designates an inlet star wheel, numeral 4 designates a bottling machine, numeral 5 designates a transfer star wheel, numeral 6 designates a capping machine, and numeral 7 designates an outlet star wheel. Explaining bottling machine 4 in more detail with reference to FIGS. 2, 3 and 4, in FIG. 2 reference numeral 8 designates a machine body, numeral 9 designates a bottling tank provided at the center of the machine body, numeral 10 in FIGS. 2 and 3 designates a pillar member disposed at the center of the bottling tank 9, numerals 11 and 12 designate pressurized air passageways extending through pillar member 10 and opening at an upper portion of the bottling tank 9, numeral 13 designates a beer supply tube opening within bottling tank 9 at the bottom portion thereof, numeral 14 designates a float fitted around pillar member 10 in a vertically movable manner and floating on a beer surface (F) within the bottling tank 9, numeral 15 in FIG. 3 designates an upper valve fitted around a top portion of the pillar member 10 in a vertically movable manner, numeral 16 designates a lower valve fitted around the same top portion in a vertically movable manner, numeral 17 designates a compression spring interposed between respective valves 15 and 16, numeral 18 designates a float pin which is adapted to push up the lower valve 16 so as to open the aforementioned pressurized air feed passageway 11 when the beer surface (F) rises, resulting in a raising of the float 14, numeral 19 designates a float step which is adapted to push down the upper valve 15 so as to open the above-mentioned pressurized air discharge passageway 12 when the beer surface F falls, resulting in a lowering of the float 14, numeral 20 in FIG. 2 designates a plurality of bottling valves provided along the outer circumference of machine body 8, numeral 21 designates a switching lever for each said valve 20, numeral 22 designates a pressurized air passageway extending from the upper portion of bottling tank 9 to each valve 20, numeral 23 designates a beer passageway extending from the bottom portion of bottling tank 9 to each valve 20, numeral 22' in FIG. 4 designates a pressurized air passageway extending further from each valve 20, numeral 25 designates a beer pouring tube extending from each valve 20, and numeral 26 designates a centering bell mounted around each beer pouring tube 25 in a vertically movable manner.
The bottle feed screw 2 in FIG. 1 feeds empty bottles 1 which have been conveyed thereto to the inlet star wheel 3 under timing control, and star wheel 3 feeds the bottles towards the bottling machine 4. This bottling machine 4 is rotating in the direction of the arrow in FIG. 1. In addition, around the bottling machine 4 are provided bottle pedestals 27 (See FIGS. 2 and 4) which move round the bottling machine 4 in synchronization therewith, and which receive empty bottles 1 at a position p in FIG. 1 from the above-mentioned star wheel 3 and support the bottles thereon and thus begin to move the empty bottles 1 in the direction of the arrow. In other words, as shown on the left side in FIG. 2, an empty bottle 1 begins to move jointly with the centering bell 26 at the a position directly under the centering bell 26. It is to be noted that at this moment blow-out of air in the direction of arrows a does not exist. When the bottle pedestal 27 enters a pedestal rising section (A) in FIG. 1, it rises to raise the bottle 1 and cause the neck of the bottle to contact the centering bell 26. Thereafter, the centering bell 26 and the bottle 1 are further raised jointly, and when the bottle pedestal 27 has reached a position q in FIG. 1, the centering bell 26 is brought into contact with a packing 28 (See FIG. 4(II)). It is to be noted that as shown in FIG. 4(II), the beer pouring tube 25 is inserted into the bottle 1 during the above-described step of raising the bottle 1.
When the bottle pedestal 27 has reached the position q and the centering bell 26 makes contact with the packing 28, the bottling valve 20 is switched to the position shown in FIG. 4(III) by means of the switching lever 21 and a lever transfer device (not shown) which makes contact with the switching lever 21 to transfer the same, so that the pressurized air passageway 22 and the pressurized air passageway 22' are communicated with each other, resulting in a flow of pressurized air in the direction of arrows e in FIG. 2, and thus the interior of the bottle 1 is pressurized at a counter-pressure (P.sub.1) (a counter-pressure within the bottling tank 9 as illustrated at I in FIG. 10. Therefore, when the bottle pedestal 27 has reached a position s in FIG. 1 passing through the counter-pressurizing section B, the interior of the bottle 1 and the interior of the bottling tank 9 are maintained at the same pressure. Pressurizing the interior of the bottle, which has previously been at atmospheric pressure, until it takes the same pressure as the interior of the bottling tank 9, is for the purpose of preventing carbon dioxide gas dissolved in the beer from escaping out of the beer during the subsequent bottling process.
Beer is fed into the bottling tank 9 through the beer supply tube 13. Also within tank 9 is maintained a counter-pressure. This counter-pressure is controlled by the float 14 in FIGS. 2 and 3. More particularly, if the beer surface F is raised, then the float 14 also rises, so that the lower valve 16 is pushed up by the pin 18 provided on the float 14 to open the pressurized air feed passageway 11, whereby pressurized air is fed into the bottling tank 9, and thereby the rise of the beer surface F can be prevented. On the other hand, if the beer surface is lowered, then the float 14 also falls, so that the upper valve 15 is pushed down by the step 19 provided on the float 14 to open the pressurized air discharge passageway 12, whereby pressurized air within the bottling tank 9 is discharged, and thereby lowering of the beer surface F can be prevented.
When the bottle pedestal 27 has reached a position s in FIG. 1 and the pressurizing operation for the bottle 1 has been completed, the bottling valve 20 is switched to the position shown at (IV) in FIG. 4 by means of the switching lever 21 and the lever transfer device (not shown), so that the pressurized air passageway 22 and the pressurized air passageway 22' are communicated with each other and also the beer passageway 23 and the beer pouring tube 25 are communicated with each other. Consequently, beer flows in the direction of arrow c in FIG. 2. In other words, beer is poured from the bottling tank 9, through the beer passageway 23 and the beer pouring tube 25 into the bottle 1. Then the air within the bottle flows in the direction of arrows d in FIG. 2. That is, the air within the bottle is discharged through the pressurized air passageways 22' and 22 into the bottling tank 9. The pouring of beer and the discharge of pressurized air within the bottle continue during the period when the bottle pedestal 27 passes through the bottling section C, and these operations have been completed when the bottle pedestal 27 reaches a position t in FIG. 1. In addition, when it reaches the position t, the bottling valve 20 is switched by means of the switching lever 21 and the lever transfer device, so that the paths between the pressurized air passageways 22 and 22' and between the beer passageway 23 and the beer pouring tube 25 may be blocked.
When the bottle pedestal 27 enters a pedestal lowering section D passing through the position t, it falls to lower the bottle 1 which has finished bottling, and eventually to lower the centering bell 26 down to the lower end of the pouring tube 25 and to lower the bottle 1 further below the centering bell 26. It is to be noted that at this moment blow-out of air in the direction of arrows a does not exist. The bottle pedestal 27 delivers the bottle 1 thereon to the transfer star wheel 5 when it comes out of the pedestal lowering section D and has reached a position u in FIG. 1, and the transfer star wheel 5 transfers the bottle 1 to the capping machine 6. This capping machine 6 applies a crown cap to the bottle 1 and feeds the capped bottle 1 to the outlet star wheel 7, which serves to discharge the filled bottle onto a conveyor line.
On the other hand, the bottling valve 20 which has moved jointly with the bottle 1 up to the position u in FIG. 1, separates from the bottle 1 when it has reached the position u, and enters a blow-out section E from a position v in FIG. 1. At this position v, the valve 20 is switched to a position (I) in FIG. 4 by means of the switching lever 21 and the lever transfer device, so that the pressurized air passageway 22 and 22' are communicated with each other, the pressurized air within the bottling tank 9 flows at blow-out pressure T.sub.1 through the respective passageways 22 and 22' in the direction of arrows b in FIG. 2, and is blown out from the end of the passageway 22' in the direction of arrows a in FIG. 4(I). Discharging the pressurized air within the bottling tank 9 in this way in the blow-out section E, is for the purpose of blowing out bubbles of beer which remain and adhere to the interior of the bottling valve 20 and the pressurized air passageway 22'. If such provision should not be made, then when the bottling valve 20 again enters the bottling section C and beer is fed from the bottling tank 9 to the bottle 1, the interior of the bottle 1 would bubble, resulting in degradation of the quality of the beer, because the bubbles adhered to the above-mentioned portions would flow into the bottle 1 jointly with the flow of pressurized air in the direction of arrows e in FIG. 2 in the counter-pressurizing section B. The bottling valve 20 which has been subjected to such blow-out operation, closes its pressurized air passageway 22 when it goes out of the blow-out section E.
When the bottling valve 20 and the bottle pedestal 27 have come to the position p in FIG. 1, they again join with an empty bottle 1 supplied from the inlet star wheel 3 as shown on the left side in FIG. 2 to repeat the bottling cycle, and the other bottling valves 20 disposed along the outer circumference of the machine body 8 also move and operate in a similar manner so as to repeat the bottling cycles.
In the above described prior art beer bottling machine, when the bottle 1 is fed to the counter-pressurizing section (B), the counter-pressurizing operation is carried out by feeding the pressurized air within the bottling tank 9 into the interior of the bottle 1. Also, when each bottling valve 20 has moved to the blow-out section E, the bubbles of beer adhered to the inside of each valve 20 and to the inside of the pressurized air passageways 22 and 22' associated with each valve 20 are blown out by feeding the pressurized air within the bottling tank 9 to these inside portions, and therefore, a large amount of air is necessitated. Since such air is supplied into the bottling tank 9 through the pressurized air feed passageway 11 and flows along the surface of beer F, the prior art bottling machine has a disadvantage that the amount of air inevitably dissolved in the beer is increased, resulting in degradation of the quality of the bottled beer.
The above-described prior art problems can be resolved either by feeding the air to be used for the counter-pressurizing operation and the air to be used for the blow-out operation from a separate pressurized air source, that is, without passing the air through the bottling tank, or by replacing the air supplied to the bottling tank with carbon dioxide. However, in the case of the former approach above, the following problem still remains in connection with the pressurizing section B and the bottling section C. That is, when the bottle 1 enters the bottling section C, if the pressure within the bottle 1 should be lower than that within the bottling tank 9 even by a little, then bubbling would occur within the bottle 1, and this is not desirable. On the other hand, the pressure within the bottling tank 9 is always varying as controlled by the float 14. The reason why the interior of the bottle 1 is pressurized by the counter-pressure within the bottling tank 9 by providing the counter-pressurizing section B prior to the bottling section C as described previously, is because of such pressure variation within the bottling tank 9. Therefore, if the interior of the bottle 1 is pressurized by the pressurized air fed from a separate pressurized air source as described above, then the pressure of such pressurized air source must be controlled so as to follow the counter-pressure variation within the bottling tank 9, and thus there remain the problems that a complex and expensive pressure control device is required, and that even with such a pressure control device it is still impossible to make the pressure of the pressurized air source exactly follow the counter-pressure variation within the bottling tank 9.
It is to be noted that the blow-out operation is carried out for the purpose of blowing out the bubbles of beer adhered to the pressurized air passageway and the bottling valve as described above, and the amount of air passing through the bottling tank thereupon is far larger than that upon the counter-pressurizing in which merely the interior of the bottle is pressurized. Therefore, in order to reduce the amount of air dissolved in beer, it is a serious problem to minimize the amount of air within the bottling tank to be fed to the blow-out section to as little as possible.
On the other hand, one example of the heretofore known beer bottling machines in accordance with the latter approach above for resolving the prior art problems, that is, in the case of replacing the air supplied to the bottling tank with carbon dioxide gas, will be described hereunder with reference to FIG. 5. In this figure, reference numeral 51 designates an empty bottle, numeral 52 designates a bottling tank, numeral 53 designates a vacuum ring, numeral 54 designates an operation lever, numeral 55 designates an air valve, numeral 56 designates a liquid valve, numeral 57 designates a spreader, numeral 58 designates a vent tube, numeral 59 designates a post spring, numeral 60 designates a vacuum valve, and numeral 61 designates a snifting valve. At (I) in FIG. 5 is shown a state where the bottling tank 52 is filled with beer, and both the air valve 55 and the liquid valve 56 are closed. Then the empty bottle 51 is fed, and the vacuum valve 60 is switched to communicate the vacuum ring 53 with the empty bottle 51, so that the air within the bottle 51 is removed. When the air within the bottle has been removed by about 80 - 90%, as shown at (II) in FIG. 5 the vacuum valve 60 is switched to a closed position and at the same time the air valve 55 is switched to an opened position by means of the operation lever 54, so that the carbon dioxide gas within the bottling tank 52 is fed into the bottle 51, and thereby the interior of the bottle 51 is pressurized by the counter-pressure. When the pressure within the bottle 51 becomes equal to the counter-pressure, as shown at III in FIG. 5, the liquid valve 56 is switched by the post spring 59 to an opened position, so that beer is fed from the bottling tank 52 through the valve 56 and an outer periphery of the spreader 57 into the bottle 51. In this case, beer is dispersed by the action of the spreader 57 and flows down in a thin film form along the inner wall surface of the bottle 51. The purity of carbon dioxide gas in the upper portion of the bottling tank 52 depends upon the method of operation of the bottling machine, but in general it contains about 20% air. Upon pouring beer, the gas within the bottle 51 is returned via the vent tube 58 and the air valve 55 to the interior of the tank 52. When the surface level of beer within the bottle 51 becomes higher than the lower end of the vent tube 58 as shown at (IV) in FIG. 5 and the flow of beer into the bottle 52 is stopped, the operation lever 54 is depressed, so that the air valve 55 and the liquid valve 56 are closed, then the snifting valve 61 is switched so as to discharge the gas in the upper portion of the bottle 51 to the exterior as shown at V in FIG. 5.
In the above-described beer bottling machine, the gas in the upper portion of the bottling tank 52 is a mixture gas consisting of about 80% carbon dioxide gas and about 20% air, because the rate of removal of air within the bottle 52 in the step shown at (I) in FIG. 5 is about 80 - 90%, with about 20 - 10% air remaining in the bottle, and this air is returned to the bottling tank 52 in the step shown at (III) in FIG. 5. Thus, although the amount of air inevitably dissolved in beer within the bottling tank 52 can be reduced in comparison to the prior art beer bottling machine as shown in FIGS. 1 to 4, the problem of minimizing the amount of air dissolved in beer within the bottle 51 is not yet resolved. More particularly, beer would flow from the outer periphery of the vent tube 58 to the inside of the bottle 51 and then would flow down along the inner wall surface of the bottle 51, while a gas mixture as described above exists in the bottle 51, and therefore, as the air contained in the gas mixture makes contact with the beer that is flowing down, dissolution of the air in the beer would occur. In order to minimize the dissolution, the surface area of the beer within the bottle 51 must be reduced. However, since the above-described beer bottling machine employs an up-bottling system, in which beer is made to flow from the outer periphery of the vent tube 58 to the inside of the bottle 51 and then flow down along the inner wall surface of the bottle, the surface area of beer is large, and so, the above-described bottling machine has a disadvantage that the amount of air inevitably dissolved in the beer within the bottle 51 is large.